The Massachusetts Legislature regularly earns poor marks in the transparency of its processes compared to those in other states. According to the Sunlight Foundation, Massachusetts is one of four states that earn an “F” grade, along with Nebraska, Kentucky and Alabama. That group details numerous flaws in how the General Court reports its actions to the public.

Gas was $1.12 per gallon and stamps cost 25 cents when Marc R. Pacheco, D-Taunton, was first elected to the Massachusetts House in November 1988. Four years later, he won a seat in the state Senate, and he is seeking re-election to his 12th term this Fall.

Despite his long tenure, it wasn’t until Jan. 24, 2013, that the Senate took a small step toward transparency as it finally required roll call votes to be published online within 48 hours. That requirement was proposed by Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, and it passed unanimously.

In the House, a similar effort — to put committee votes online — had failed the day before by a roll call vote of 29-126. Since then, no other attempts to advance transparency on Beacon Hill have succeeded.

The Massachusetts Legislature regularly earns poor marks in the transparency of its processes compared to those in other states. According to the Sunlight Foundation, Massachusetts is one of four states that earn an “F” grade, along with Nebraska, Kentucky and Alabama. That group details numerous flaws in how the General Court reports its actions to the public.

Roll call votes are “not published on site in a meaningful way.” The Legislature’s website “is frequently broken, with no notice to users.” Information about legislation is “impossible to access without Javascript.” Data about how lawmakers vote is not readily available, and is “locked up” in difficult-to-use formats. Last but certainly not least, there is “a dearth of historical information” and much from before 2009 has been removed.

Despite the lack of progress toward governmental transparency, Sen. Pacheco nonetheless felt emboldened to complain about others’ supposed lack of transparency. Speaking from the floor of the Senate on March 17, he said, “I was talking about the fact that the Pioneer Institute puts these reports out, doesn’t want to list their funders. That’s a fact.”

The senator was attempting to discredit a study done by a conservative-leaning Massachusetts think tank, the Pioneer Institute, which is a registered nonprofit organization. This study discussed his signature legislative “achievement,” the so-called “Pacheco Law,” which costs the state millions each year by requiring that plans to privatize services meet impossible-to-reach benchmarks.

In short, Pacheco was arguing that because the nonprofit Pioneer Institute doesn’t list their funders, their opinion should be ignored. However, despite his charges, the institute does list its funders on its website. Four days later, Pacheco escalated his original remarks and asked Pioneer to report “the exact donation” and “which research projects those contributions funded.”

Pioneer discloses their donors but nonprofits are not required to disclose this information. Donors have the right to contribute to the organizations they choose and have some privacy when making their contribution.

Page 2 of 2 - Efforts to intimidate donors to nonprofits are growing. Some lawmakers want to require disclosure of donors to organizations that may have opinions on laws and legislation. In some cases, the same lawmakers who are calling for disclosure of donors are targeting organizations who disagree with their policies, as was the case with Sen. Pacheco and the Pioneer Institute.

Legislative leaders, including Pacheco, could use this opportunity to reflect on their actions and address the real deficiencies in their own disclosure. Instead of making misleading comments about a specific non-profit group that disagrees with his policies, Sen. Pacheco should urge his colleagues to make committee votes public and put committee hearings online in real time. The senator should take the recommendations of the Sunlight Foundation seriously and work to adopt reforms that shed more light on Beacon Hill. When it comes to disclosure and transparency, Sen. Pacheco and his colleagues are living in a glass house. They should be wary of throwing stones.

Paul D. Craney is the executive director of Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. Follow him on Twitter @pauldiegocraney.